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Woody Allen is back, and in form, in 'Blue Jasmine'

Woody Allen takes a harsh look at Manhattan in the engrossing "Blue Jasmine," featuring Cate Blanchett as a disgraced socialite.

In this film image released by Sony Pictures Classics shows (from second left) Cate Blanchette, Sally Hawkins and Andrew Dice Clay in a scene from the Woody Allen film, "Blue Jasmine."  (AP Photo/Sony Pictures Classics)
In this film image released by Sony Pictures Classics shows (from second left) Cate Blanchette, Sally Hawkins and Andrew Dice Clay in a scene from the Woody Allen film, "Blue Jasmine." (AP Photo/Sony Pictures Classics)Read more

DO ENOUGH sleuthing for culprits in the financial meltdown and you'll find at least a few guilty footprints leading to the Upper East Side of New York.

The area is the preferred address for investment bankers, hedge-fund kingpins, derivative traders and the financial Frankenstein who developed the synthetic CDO.

And, as it happens, Woody Allen, just back from an extended and reinvigorating stay in Europe.

Apparently, he doesn't much like what he now sees. In "Blue Jasmine" he takes an uncharacteristically harsh look at his neighborhood and its inhabitants, so don't expect the warm glow of "Manhattan."

The title character (Cate Blanchett) is a socialite who rode the boom and felt the bust and now is trying to adjust to life on the cheap with the gum-snapping sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins) she once disowned.

In her glory days, Jasmine was wife to a Wall Street guy (Alec Baldwin), somewhere between Bernie Madoff and Jon Corzine, who blew up his own company and took his investors down with him.

Jasmine has been likened to Ruth Madoff - questions about what she knew morph, by movie's end, into accusatory considerations of what she should have known.

But there's more to this woman, who is also a bit like a gender-inverted Gatsby. Jasmine's an invented name, and her WASPy clenched-jaw diction is an affectation to disguise her humble roots - and it's worked. She worked her way into college, married a wealthy up-and-comer and lived the posh life.

This (and Blanchett's complex performance) helps lift the character out of caricature. Despite her pretense and her airs, there is something heroic about the way Jasmine pulls herself together and maintains her practiced poise. If Allen were of a mind, he could have made this a highbrow fish-out-of-water comedy.

But this is harder stuff. And Jasmine, while she makes us laugh from time to time, is not funny. She's dangerously delusional, and her condition deteriorates as the movie unfolds.

This, as Jasmine desperately props up her finishing-school façade in hopes of snagging another rich guy (Peter Sarsgaard), and advises her low-rent sister to do the same. Jasmine's already ruined Ginger's marriage (to Andrew "Dice" Clay) and is now urging her to drop her mechanic boyfriend for a white-collar salesman (Louis C.K.).

It's obvious that Allen understands his Upper East Siders, but just as obvious that he has less of a grasp on the blue-collar types he writes into the script. Ginger's jettisoned boyfriend (Bobby Cannavale) is referred to as a "grease monkey." I think the last writer to use that term was S.E. Hinton. The men huddle around a small TV set, watching boxing matches, waiting for the "main event."

Much has changed, Woody, since you left for Europe.

Google "MMA."

One thing has changed for the better. Allen appears to be looking at his Manhattan caste with fresh eyes. Often in his movies, the characters' casual wealth and sense of entitlement passes almost without commentary.

Not so, here.

It's an acid, lacerating portrait of hubris and privilege, of a cohort yet to come to grips with the consequences of its bubble-inflating actions. There is one bubble yet to burst, Allen seems to say, and it's the reality-distortion field around the Jasmines of the world.

When bankrupt Jasmine shows up at Ginger's door, complaining of being tapped out, sis wants to know how a penniless woman managed to fly first class.

"I don't know," Jasmine says. "I just . . . did."

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